Kerala, Uttarakhand top NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index; Bihar worst performer

“Targeted intervention by the government has helped India achieve significant improvements across 16 goals set under the SDGs,” NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam said after releasing the report. The SDGs are a set of interconnected global goals established by the United Nations to be achieved by 2030. The latest SDG India Index is in its fourth edition and relies on 113 indicators to assess a state’s performance.

Among goals, “No Poverty”, “Decent Work and Economic Growth”, and “Life on Land” recorded the highest increase in points across states from 2020-21 scores, while goals like “Gender Equality” and “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institution” saw the smallest increase in points. Notably, “Reduced Inequalities” was the only goal to record a reduction in points to 65 in 2022-23 from 67 in 2020-21. “Reduced Inequalities is the only SDG in which there is a marginal drop and this is also an area that shows you the distribution of wealth. So, you can see that in large parts of India, there are states where inequalities are high and I think it is linked to getting employment at the bottom of the pyramid,” Subrahmanyam said.

“Inequality in India has not increased, it has reduced. There has been a contraction in the consumption gap between the richest 10 per cent and the bottom 10 per cent… You look at the number of taxpayers who have filed income tax returns, it has gone up dramatically in the last number of years. People in the lower tax slabs are going to the upper tax slab,” Subrahmanyam said. He added that the Reduced Inequalities goal also includes gender inequality in terms of labour workforce participation. The Gender Equality goal received the lowest score of 49 points among all goals, recording a marginal increase of 1 point from 2020-21. “You will see the states which are not doing well have issues like the sex ratio at birth. There are states which are below 900 even now. So, that gets reflected here. You have other issues like women owning land, women owning assets, women in employment, women’s labour force participation rate– that would be weaker. If there is one area of maximum concern, it is this,” Subrahmanyam said.

In the latest report, the all-India score for the Zero Poverty goal recorded an increase of 8 points to 72. “Most of India has actually hit the issue of extreme poverty. You don’t have people suffering from hunger and disease. Livelihoods are not an issue. Maybe their aspirations are there for higher and higher livelihoods, but basic survival is no longer an issue in most parts of India,” Subrahmanyam said.

With respect to the Zero Hunger goal, the score for which increased by 5 points to 52, Subrahmanyam said that focus needs to be on providing nutritious food to tackle malnourishment, stunting, and low body mass index (BMI) scores.

On the “Quality of Education” goal, which increased by 4 points to 61, Subrahmanyam said, “In India, we have solved the problem of lack of access. Most states are actually below 30 students per teacher. So, there’s no shortage of teachers for education. Some states have improved but some of the reds, like in central India, are very sticky. Access in India is not an issue, it’s quality and that gets reflected in other areas where they get good employment opportunities.”